


my heart is beating faster than cars drive

by tosca1390



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:32:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Here in the darkness, alone and apart, she feels the weight of from where she’s come on her shoulders, a deep ache in her chest.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	my heart is beating faster than cars drive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts), [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> For Jordan, Grace, Jess, and Katie. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID. Post Book One.

*

Sascha wakes up alone in the middle of the night. The forest is quiet and still outside the aerie. Swallowed in darkness, she blinks and sits up. There is no moon, no starlight, just the heavy weight of cool black night air. 

It is the first time she has woken up by herself in three days. 

Her hand moves to the empty half of the bed, where Lucas almost always is. The sheets are cool to the touch. A psychic finger reaches out to touch the bond to him, somewhere deep and buried as if it has always been a piece of her, waiting. But she withdraws and breathes through the silence of the room, eyes adjusting to the lack of light. 

In hours, just hours, she will meet with her mother. The thought shudders through her in a way she would never have let herself feel just weeks ago. The last month has been a rollercoaster of change, but one thing remains: her mother’s priorities. The legal notice arrived via courier at the DarkRiver offices the day before, brought by Nate: a full legal separation from the Duncan clan, initiated by the head, Nikita, and a summons to meet via audiovisual for the witnessing of the official decree. No personal note, no mention of familial loyalty; Sascha knew better than to expect so. 

“Of course,” Sascha says to herself, clasping her hands in her lap. She sits against the headboard of the bed, looking out into empty air and space. She had said as much to Lucas when the notice arrived, when his skin flushed with anger and his eyes narrowed, cat-like and sharply green. “I am a liability.”

“I’ll never understand that world,” he’d said, voice full of derision and controlled fury. 

She’d smiled slightly, sitting at the kitchen table of the bright aerie, and let him stalk around her, let him slide a possessive broad hand over the long braid down her back before he left for a sentinel meeting. But here in the darkness, alone and apart, she feels the weight of from where she’s come on her shoulders, a deep ache in her chest. For days it’s been the weight of emotion, of hers and others, settling under her skin and metallic in her mouth. It’s a different kind of shielding she needs now, and she has yet to figure out the building blocks. Instead, she feels as if she has been drowning in the saturation of sensation, of want and need. 

It’s why earlier, when Lucas wanted to bring her to the meeting, an alpha’s mate with the pack, she demurred. _My mother, I must prepare_ , she’d said. He’d given her the lie, but in his eyes she’d seen the truth of it. She was hiding; he refused to let her for very long. 

The loneliness settles in her. Her hand reaches out, palm down, to his side of the bed. This is a statement from him; she isn’t so slow in the ways of changelings that she doesn’t understand. The bond is quiet, though it weighs much inside of her. She is killing him day by day, hour by hour, and she can’t imagine it was worth it, not like this. 

Her eyes flicker to the glowing timepiece. Nine hours until the conference call, until the final severing of her past. Sascha slips from bed and moves into the living room, paper and pen in hand. The tactile feel of the paper draws her in, past datapads and bright screens. She wants to relish the feel of everything and all in the time she has left. Lights flicker on as she settles in the armchair she calls home now, pale warmth filling the room. A breeze settles through the open windows, raising the hair on the nape of her neck. 

This is where she remains as the night lessens its hold on the mountains and forests, the darkness fading with the hours. It is where Lucas finds her in the powder-blue pre-dawn light. She feels him before she hears him, feels the shift from panther to human at the front porch. The cat feels just slightly different in the bond than the man does, less filtered. The intricacies are still unfamiliar to her, but she will learn as much as she can. She will try. 

“Up early, kitten.”

She tilts her neck, watching him in the doorway of the living room. Jeans sling low on his hips, his chest bare; the new light touches a film of sweat over his skin. Running, she thinks to herself. He has been running. 

“Or I never went to sleep,” she counters. 

Worry darkens and narrows his eyes. The sharp line of his jaw tautens visibly. She feels the bond stretch with his frustration. 

“I slept a little,” she concedes at last, tapping the end of her pen against her paper. “Don’t cat-out on me.”

His shoulders relax a fraction, even as his arms cross over his bare chest. “Cat-out?” he repeats, amused. The corner of his mouth curls up. 

“You know precisely what I mean.”

At his sides, his large hands flex, as if he longs to touch, to wrap his fingers into her hair and hold on. But he has been careful, strangely so, in a way he wasn’t just days ago. She knows it is because of her, because of the nature of her losses and gains; she is not comfortable with the changelings ways yet, as her empathy struggles to slide into the grips and hooks left by years of Silence and the Net and necessary defenses. There are too many shifts in the last few days to keep up with; and now, another. 

“Lucas,” she says softly. Her voice is open, too bare and shuddering in the pale dawn. She can see the swirls and whorls in the wood planks below them as the weak light creeps through the trees branches. 

He comes immediately, across the room and kneeling at her side faster than she can blink. His hands cover her bare knees, skirting the hem of the long t-shirt of his she wears to sleep now. “You ready to talk now?” 

“I would not know where to start,” she says, a tablet full of words bubbling at her tongue. 

“We could start with why you’re hiding from everyone, darling.”

“Not everyone,” she retorts. 

He smooths the callused pads of his fingers over the curve of her knee. Heat rises to the top of her skin, warming her cheeks. “Pack.”

Her mouth twists. “I need – I need time.”

Eyebrows quirking upwards, he says nothing. He doesn’t have to; the look on his face tells her plainly enough how ridiculous he thinks she’s being. 

“Stop it,” she mutters, thwacking his hands lightly with her pen. “It’s been – two days? I can’t just jump from one safety net to another. I need to learn the language, the cultural imperatives, the relationships – I refuse to hide behind you as you’d let me.”

“It isn’t hiding, not with us,” he says sharply, his palms flat on the insides of her knees. “We’re Pack.”

“That is easy enough for you, but right now, it is jarring to me,” she says quietly. She does not want to start a fight, not this early; she feels the pinpricks of exhaustion at her eyelids and nerves. Her mother will note all weakness, catalog it away for further use. 

Lucas remains silent, his eyes sharpening as the cat in him rises closer to the skin. She can feel it through the bond, sense it in the tips of his callused fingers. Her empathetic senses sting with it, the taste feral in her mouth. 

It’s fear, she thinks abruptly. Her hands drop the pad and paper and fall to cover his. 

“I am not running,” she says fiercely. 

His gaze flickers to hers. “Who said anything about that?”

“Stop,” she says, rolling her eyes. Stubborn, intransigent idiot. _Hers_ , but still an idiot. “I can feel your worry.”

“That’s just my natural state, sweetheart. Can’t turn it off.”

“It is unnecessary,” she tells him, her voice falling all too naturally into the rhythms of her past, clipped cadence and drawn shields. “I am not leaving.”

His fingers slide into hers over her knees. The skin to skin contact is still a rush to her, keeps her dizzy yet grounded in all that is him; another sign of the changes, the need to adapt. “I know you’re not.”

She tilts her head. Her braid hangs heavy down her back. “It’s too much,” she whispers. 

Even now, the weight of Dorian’s anguish on her skin is like an anvil, the heavy press of Hawke’s torment against her veins. Even Lucas is without relief, dark and quiet and latent under the hum of his voice. When she thinks of walking into a room with all of them there, her bones seem brittle as bark. Mercy is a salve, Tammy and Nate old enough to have worked through the majority of their own issues together. But the other sentinels bring the extent of her abilities into sharp relief, and she isn’t ready. It had all but broken her to be a comfort to Dorian those few days ago, after Enrique’s execution. She had curled right into Lucas and let him hold her, support her. She cannot allow herself that luxury again, not with an entire Pack counting on her to do the same for their alpha. 

“What is?” he asks her, voice low. He is gentling her, she realizes. She has felt the power of his possession, but this is something else altogether. 

“I don’t have the right handle on navigating everyone’s emotions,” she says slowly, trying to parse out her thoughts. “And it can be difficult to be around them all like this.”

“They want you around,” he says calmly, his thumbs sliding over the thin skin of the top of her hands. 

 

“I’m not questioning their acceptance,” she says, frustration rising within herself. She doesn’t know what words to use here that won’t utterly confuse the point or make him angry. “I’m questioning my abilities.”

“Your abilities saved us, saved Brenna –“

“In their raw form, they were very helpful,” she interjects, shrugging. “But now, to live with them – for as long as I have to do so – it is very different.”

She meets his gaze then, dark green and too heavy in his sharply angled face. His mouth is drawn, just as the bond she senses between them is taut. “I am at a loss as to how to go on,” she says at last, because that is the truth of it. 

He growls, quiet and protective. “C’mere.”

She doesn’t resist as he gathers her in his arms, lifts her against his body. He sits in the armchair and she curls herself around him, her arms at his neck. He strokes one hand over her belly, her ribs, as the other settles near the nape of her neck. Exhaustion settles within her, both his and hers; neither of them are rested well enough, their physical and psychic bond already beginning to drag them down. She still wants to throttle him for what he did, for the initiation of the mating bond; watching Lucas fade, her fierce and lively cat, will be like a second death to her own psyche. 

“You just do it,” he says at last, his mouth close to her temple. He is all solid muscle and heat under her. “If there is anyone who can, it’s you, kitten.”

Turning into his touch at her neck, she leans into his palm. It’s a signal of trust, the pulse of his possession at her nape. She trusts him. “It will take time to learn the new patterns, to trust myself.”

“Yourself?”

She shakes her head, her fingers tunneling into the dark hair at his shoulders. “I have utter faith in the pack. It is my own missteps that I fear.”

He groans in exasperation and leans into kiss her. She is grateful for the moment of silence, for the skin-to-skin contact where she needs it most. His mouth opens over hers and she lets him in, closes her eyes and gives into the bond fully for the first time in hours. He is there, enveloping her in all ways; the comfort is there, the jagged frustration, the determination. She bites lightly at his bottom lip, feels his hand clench at her waist. 

“You’re more capable than you give yourself credit for,” he says when he releases her mouth at last, breath quickening. “The amount of shit you give me constantly should tell you that.”

“No one else will,” she retorts. 

“And that’s the point,” he says, lowering his mouth to kiss her jaw, the soft shell of her ear. “An alpha’s mate is beyond the hierarchy. If you weren’t capable, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“See? These are the things I will need time with,” she protests, goosebumps rising on her skin. “And I can’t be the only one.”

His nose presses into her neck, his breath hot against her skin. She waits, waits for the strange silence to pass. With a gentle touch, she reaches out to the bond, strong and true inside her deepest self. 

“You’ve never depended on anyone like this before,” she says, speaking when he does not, cannot. “Your sentinels, yes. But not this. Not like me.”

“No,” he grits out at last, voice gravelly. She feels the echo of its timbre in her bones. 

“So we both have adjustments to make,” she continues, her lips light against his temple. His dark hair, sleek as night, falls softly against her cheek. 

He lifts his head then, dark cat-like eyes fixed on hers. Mouth curling, his teeth slice white between them. “You’re so sexy when you’re methodical.”

She pinches his neck. He turns his head to bite playfully at her fingers, and she laughs. “You have a place. Let me find mine, in my own way,” she says, touching her fingertips to his mouth. 

Parting his lips, the tip of his tongue touches her skin. It’s brief, but just enough to send a spark right through her, heat melting in her middle. “That’s asking quite a lot of patience from me, darling heart.”

Biting her lip, she continues her slow trace of his mouth with her touch, a shiver running under her skin. “You already have all of me,” she says. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

A wicked gleam touches his eyes, his smile widening. “A good deal,” he says, using the hand on her neck to pull her mouth down to his. This is a familiar dance; she’s known the steps for such a brief amount of time, but it still comes as naturally to her as breathing. He is hers and she is his, and there are multitudes between them, infinite words that she may never have the strength to say. 

She straddles his lap, her knees sinking into the cushions. Wide warm hands make wide passes down the line of her back, over her ribs. Her knee catches the pad of paper and she laughs, breaking away just for a moment to move the offending object. 

“What’s this?” he asks, voice all warmth and smiles. His hand covers hers over the paper, scratched deep with black ink. 

Flushing, she settles in his lap. “Notes, for myself. I am trying to learn your ways, you know.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle as he cups her face in his hands, almost tragically tender. “Taking notes?”

“It helps me think,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

“You’re so logical sometimes it hurts my head, baby,” he mutters, but he is smiling as he kisses her. His hands go to her braid, undoing and unraveling the strands until her hair surrounds her face and shoulders in a dark curly cloud. 

“I do not mean to be logical,” she says, a strange tendril of hurt winding through her. It feels as if he is calling her out, a Psy marker. “The intricacies of the Pack are important to you, so they are to me. Until I can emotionally handle everyone, I must learn somehow.”

He twists the fingers of one hand through her hair, cupping the back of her neck. “I meant nothing except to say that you’re a stubborn woman and I love you for it,” he says before kissing her again. This time, his mouth was a demanding press, a reminder of where he thinks she belongs. His other hand slides over her breasts, her belly, under the hem of her t-shirt. 

_Do I belong_? She thinks even as his mouth covers hers, follows the line of her throat, bites at her pulse. His hands make her come apart, boneless and warm against his chest. His fingers slide in and out of her, his thumb at her clit, as he whispers against her skin, words of possession and ferocity. She can almost feel the cat under his skin as her hands slide over his bare chest, digging in for a sense of foundation. Everything is sparks and heat behind her eyelids; she can’t help but cry out as she comes. The tactile sensations are still so much, even as the bond strengthens and holds fast. 

When she is soft in his arms, breathing slow and warm against his neck, he lifts her as he stands with ease. He carries her into their bedroom and all but pours her into bed. The exhaustion of the week and the dread of the day ahead of her, it all sinks into her pores. She curls herself around him after he strips off his jeans and follows her into bed. His hand rests in the wild tumble of her hair as she trails a soft hand between his hips. 

“Where were you, before?” she asks softly. She imagines the brush of pine against fur, the prick of claws right under the skin. Sometimes she thinks she could disappear into him. 

He inhales audibly as she wraps her hand around his hard length, fingers teasing and light. “Running.”

“Alone?” she asks, raising her head from his shoulder. 

Nodding sharply, he arches his hips into her hand. She sits up and slips a thigh over his waist, settling on his thighs. There are his hands on her hips, hard and claiming. She likes the reminders of him on her skin, the small lovemarks and bruises that never truly ache. He is hot and heavy in her grip, the cords of his throat taut as he throws his head back into the pillow. His gaze remains fixed on her, all but glowing in the faint light of dawn. 

Pale blue light slips through the windows, the trees, touching the honey-gold of her skin and his. She sighs as she guides him inside her, stretching herself over him and bracing her hands on his shoulders. The cat is there, watching her, straining under his skin; but he holds her with care and moves as she does, a low groan curling out of his throat almost as a purr. She catalogs the sounds, the feel of his skin; it is all the sensation she could want, after years of deprivation and shielding. She needs everything she can, to bolster herself, in the wake of the days to come. 

“Sascha,” he breathes near her ear, his teeth white in the pale-filtered light. Her hair falls in loose curls around their faces. 

Stretching, she tilts her throat, open to his hungry mouth. It’s a deep-seeded instinct, one she feels low in her belly. His hands cup her back and he turns them to press her back into the bed. Her thighs wrap over his hips, a small heel dragging down over the back of his thigh, the inside of his knee. His teeth sink into the curve of her neck and shoulder and she sees stars, pulses of light and strength that tie her to him. Everything is, for a moment, perfect. She feels whole. 

Moments later, he slips out of her and kisses down the line of her jaw, her throat. She is tender inside and out, her heart soft, nearly fully open to him here in this moment. Her skin crawls with warmth, the hair raised on her arms. Lucas curls his arms around her, pulling her close. She tucks her cheek against the hollow of his shoulder and breathes. 

“It’s early,” he says at last, voice hoarse. “Sleep.”

“I’m afraid,” she blurts out, vulnerable and quiet. 

His hands stroke over her hair, his mouth near her forehead. “I’m sorry for leaving you.”

“It’s not that,” she sighs, curving a hand on his chest. His skin is warm and damp with sweat. “I don’t need a keeper.”

Quiet for a moment, he touches his lips to her brow. “Nikita.”

A chill slides through her, thick and ugly. “Yes.”

His grip tightens around her. “I will be there the whole time,” he says, voice gruff. “She can’t hurt you.”

Sascha smiles slightly, spreads her hand palm down over his heart. It beats in time with hers. His sheer bullheaded intransigence is to be admired in this moment. “No,” she says quietly. It’s easier in this moment to agree than open herself to the true reason for her fear: the surety that in her fall, she has proven her mother right. The brokenness remains, even in a different space in the world. Her mother will know. 

Smoothing the hair from her face, he touches her cheek. She lifts her gaze to his, preternaturally bright in the beginnings of dawn. “She can’t,” he repeats. There’s a predatory hold to the bond, a reassurance. “You are so much more than they are. You always have been.”

There is no artifice in Lucas; it’s against his nature. The truth of his words settles through the bond. Her mouth curves downwards, but she does not flinch. Tucking herself close to his side, she kisses a mark left by her earlier on his shoulder. Tears burn behind her eyes, but do not fall. She is still unused to such normal displays of emotion; it leaves her shaken. 

“You need to sleep,” she says when she can finally speak, the words lost in his skin. 

She thinks she can feel the smile on his lips. “Okay, darling,” he says, stroking his hand down her back, a gentle pet. 

Closing her eyes, she finally sleeps in the first moments of dawn. The forest is just coming to life outside, but the aerie is still and silent around them, as they sleep. 

*

Lucas has to all but carry her into the aerie at the end of the day. The weight of Brenna’s pain lingers on her skin, hovers like a dark bird. Sascha weaves on her feet as he sets her down on the front porch. 

“Easy, kitten,” he says, an arm around her waist. 

“I’m fine,” she says, and means it with every bone in her body. A healer, that’s what Tammy had said days ago, and what had come most naturally to Sascha this afternoon with Brenna. It had taken every inch of her to bring Brenna back; but there was goodness in it, true power. 

“Yeah, you’re fine,” he mutters, helping her inside. “You’re a fucking nutcase.”

“What a sweet-talker you are,” she drawls, letting him hustle into the bathroom. 

Lucas glares balefully, his mouth pursed. “Shower and change. I’ll make you something to eat.”

Smiling dreamily, she leans up to kiss him, her teeth sinking into his bottom lip. She feels the growl low in his chest more than she hears it, a sharp vibration against her skin. His cat is there, prowling at the surface. His hands flex and grasp at her waist, holding her too close to breath. She thinks for a moment he will crack, will break, but then he drags his mouth from hers and exhales. 

“Shower,” he repeats. She hears it for the order it is, but doesn’t argue. The day has drained her of any real fight, apart from the lingering resentments of his choice to save her. But tonight is not the time for that. 

When she emerges from the steam-filled shower, still pale and drawn to her own gaze, she finds the bedroom empty. She pulls on a shirt of his and jeans and pads out into the common part of the aerie. Still nothing. She finds him at last on the porch, leaning back against the wooden walls. There is a bowl of soup and a sandwich on a plate next to him, as well as a plate piled high with cookies. 

“Hi,” she says, sitting next to him and reaching for the cookies. 

“Real food first,” he scolds, pushing the bowl of soup towards her. 

She eats obediently, the potato and leek soup thick and warm and delicious. His arm slides around her shoulders, pulling her close. Twilight settles over the tops of the trees, the mountains in the distance, all purples and oranges. The saturation of color and touch is soothing to her worn nerves. She breathes in and settles closer into his side, not protesting when he hands her the sandwich, peanut butter and strawberry jam. 

“Cubs eat this combination,” she says, breaking the dusky silence. The animals and birds seem to settle with them, as if they know to be soft and silent. 

“It’s all I had,” he says, voice low. “Should I call Tammy?”

Shaking her head, she polishes off the sandwich with ease, and sets the plate aside. “I’m fine. Really. It was an exertion, one I was not necessarily prepared for. But it was for the best.”

He kisses her brow, her cheek. His free hand sits on her thigh possessively. “You were amazing,” he says, all gruff admiration. 

“I only want to help her. Help all of them,” she says, thinking of Dorian, of Clay, of Mercy and Hawke. She thinks of the darkness touching Judd Lauren and Sienna, of the lost souls that are drawn to these lands. There is something kind in nature, forgiving; the ability to be more. 

“You will,” he says with the certainty only an alpha can carry. Then, he hands her the cookies. 

They sit there as the dusk deepens into night. He steals cookies from her plate and she kisses the chocolate from his fingers. The bond holds; it is her anchor in the blackness, just as she is his.

*

The next day, she invites the sentinels (and Tammy) to dinner. She burns the pizza, and they all take turns with gentle ribbing, but she does not break under the undercurrents of emotion. Lucas stands across from her in the kitchen, his face even. But his eyes gleam brightly, and she feels the pull of his heart in her own. 

*


End file.
